Group items tagged

This is a short article linking to several educational game-making sites. Creating your own game means targeted practice for your students, but most of the sites also have a bank of games made by other students and teachers. Most are exceedingly simple, but students find them really motivating. And students will learn even more by making their own for self-study or practice with friends.

"Free Math Help offers a variety of free tools to help students with Algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and statistics. The site has a simple interface with color coded tabs identifying their four categories which are lessons, calculators, games, and forums." This blog post describes the website, which includes over 100 lessons, calculators, and games for younger learners.

"We learn most effectively when motivated. This is a list of games your kids will have fun playing ... while also learning important skills and lessons as a by-product!" Spotted this, via Sam Gliksman's blog. Several are social games also. I'm eager to try The Oregon Trail. Now, if only they made a Hypercard app.

Nik demonstrates an annoying little game, but you might use this to teach new key-boarders how to hit the keys on a QWERTY keyboard, or practice the alphabet. Has interesting potential. It's free and quick to make games.

A nice review of the free online and DVD-based game to learn English. Trace Effects takes the student through adventures all around the U.S. using vocabulary to learn things about his new friends and achieve certain tasks that are typically American -- women's roles in society, saving the environment, community work, science and innovation, etc. The toolkit includes a massive number of teaching suggestions, teacher resources, games, a graphic novel, etc.

Games, especially involving teams, are a good way to get in a lot of language practice, and can also teach some social skills. These games are family-friend and are categories for appropriateness for classrooms, ice-breakers, party, active games, etc.

In this case, "cheating" involves find the best answers. The game shows that cooperation, generally, gets better results than going it alone, competitively. Thought-provoking for student teachers to think about. Would it work as a procedure? A flipped testing situation?

This teacher-made site has lots of the traditional games: crossword, hangman, word search, but also brain teasers and visual puzzles. Free.

Hopscotch is an iPad app that young learners can use to create their own games using templates. I think Hopscotch is ready to be tried out. Looks like fun. As gaming comes into the picture, there are lots of good tools out there for kids to try to make their own games. Project-based learning. By the makers of Daisy the Dinosaur.

Webinar on gaming. These recordings of the proceedings are of interest to anyone who wants to use games and/or insert gamification elements into their classroom routines. This webcomference was a joint effort of IATEFL's LTSIG and the TESOL CALL-IS.

A wide-ranging set of mini-articles and resources on games and learning. Consider how games can be used to enhance your classroom. Then try out some yourself.

This looks like a fascinating game system that includes physics (Newton), drawing (Masterpiece), increasingly difficult puzzles (Tangram), and words and numbers for game practice. It uses both physical and digital elements -- e.g., drawing on paper, and moving letters and numbers around. I haven't had a chance to try it out, but it's one of "TIME's [popular news magazine] best inventions of 2014." The only catch is the $99 to buy the app. You will then need to spend a little more for some of the apps. For 9+.

Several of these are mobile tools, and include apps for creating Pac-Man style games, timed quizzes, Jeopardy-style games, etc. Move over old Flashcards!

A space created to hare activities and games for EFL. Check the sidebar for categories: paper games, powerpoint games and presentations, and tutorials, songs, templates. Teachers can leave comments and suggestions.

This is such a fun site -- you can make Arcade-like games -- or your students can do it for each other. Has dozens of interesting activities as well, such as a QR game generator, jigsaw puzzle, animated book, timeline, fishbone chart, etc. Mouse over the list of Templates to find a visual preview of each activity. One of the most useful sites I've found.

"Based on the motivational theories of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, the game encourages students to assess themselves not on how smart or talented they are, but on how hard they work. And the reward for completing quests with characters is significant: Help the Cheshire cat from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and he'll help you turn invisible so you can sneak through the virtual world a la Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak. "The more characters from literature you get to know, the more powerful you become," says Schell. "

" CodeMonkey is a fun and educational game environment where students learn to code in a real programming language, no previous experience needed. " Students start with a game that helps teach them CoffeeScript, an HTML5 variant. The teacher's kit helps with basic computer science concepts. Students should be able to build their own games after mastering the code.

"In the site, you will find a variety of review games, classroom management software, and other miscellaneous tools for educators." Students and/or teachers can make and share learning games on this, site, for example, a customized Jeopardy review of vocabulary or a board game where players must answer questions about a reading to advance. Also contains teacher tools such as a seating chart maker, a group maker to randomly assign students to groups, etc. And also lots of links to population counters, hangman, random fact generator, etc.

You can create a Jeopardy-type game easily online and show it through a projector. The teacher (or a student) has to add the score manually after each question is answered. But the site will store games in your account and you can browse and edit other people's templates (so far 1544 created).

This is a teacher training simulation/game that helps recreate the realities of teaching. A European Lifelong Learning Programme project. The trainee contols and avatar that interacts with student avatars in a virtual classroom where a series of situations arise that challenge pedagogical skills. The first example deals with teaching biology.